Upstream published development version 2.7.5 on 2012-03-13, a stable version is expected in Q2/2012; gimp-2.7.5-1 was built into Rawhide and F-17 on 2012-03-13. Release notes and few blocker bugs are the main outstanding items for the 2.8 release.

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Upstream published version 2.8.0 on 2012-05-03; gimp-2.8.0-1 was built into Rawhide and F-17 on 2012-05-10, dependent packages were rebuilt with a previous version of the release candidate.

The brush dynamics engine has been expanded considerably, making almost all aspects of the brush engine drivable by a multitude of inputs, all of them configurable with their own response curve.

State of tools is now savable as presets with meaningful names.

A completely new Cage transform tool has been added, implementing an innovative approach to free transformation which makes it possible to easily warp parts of objects using an adjustable user-defined polygonal frame.

New widgets, configuration and other improvements for users of advanced input devices (e.g. tablets).

It is now possible to tag GIMP resources such as brushes and patterns.

Upstream is approaching a 2.8 release with few remaining "must have" items. Few other packages depend on GIMP, mainly external plugins. While the plugin interface is supposed to be backwards-compatible, Fedora packages containing GIMP plugins should be rebuilt to be on the safe side.

Before: Some users didn't like that GIMP had several windows. Now: These users can use Single-Window Mode.

Before: Users had to emulate layer groups e.g. by using several images and combining them which wouldn't let their work be saved as one whole thing and had a high potential for losing work (no coherent undo here for instance). Now: Users can e.g. subtract one layer from another and treat the combined result as one layer, eventually combining it with other layers or groups.

Mainly packages containing external GIMP plugins depend on the GIMP packages. These will be rebuilt to spot eventual API compatibility problems, both against the current development and the then stable version.

The GTK version on which this GIMP version depends doesn't properly support certain graphics tablets.

Old tools presets are not 100% convertible to new ones, for instance brush scale can't be converted to brush size.

GIMP can use poppler to import PDF files, however GIMP 2.7/2.8 changed the license to GPLv3+/LGPLv3+, which is incompatible with the current poppler license (GPLv2 only). The upcoming poppler version 0.20 will be GPLv2/GPLv3 dual-licensed, making GIMP and poppler licenses compatible again. In the meantime, GIMP will use the PostScript plugin for importing PDF files.